


Until the Day Breathes and the Shadows Flee

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: F/M, Foreplay, Intimacy, Naked Cuddling, Prompt Fic, Romantic Fluff, Sensuality, Slice of Life, Teasing, Touching, cotton candy bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-20
Updated: 2015-06-20
Packaged: 2018-04-05 08:02:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4172154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being with Matt is still a terrible idea, but Claire can find some compensations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Until the Day Breathes and the Shadows Flee

**Author's Note:**

  * For [geeru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/geeru/gifts).



> This fic was written in response to the following [kinkmeme prompt](https://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/1296.html?thread=2502672#cmt2502672): _matt/claire, skinship. because of[this gifset](http://lackofprivacy.tumblr.com/post/119636579590); matt doing it to claire or vice versa I don't mind, but it could be good if it was part of the aftersex "cuddling" that then leads to just more sex after the sex._ It's also a response to the [Cotton Candy Bingo](http://cottoncandy-bingo.dreamwidth.org/) prompt: _skin_ , because why not. :-)

"This is still a terrible idea," Claire said afterward, as they lay on the rumpled sheets of her bed, sweaty and sated. Matt was buried facedown in her pillow, his arms folded under his head and his back and ass spread out like an invitation. Claire propped herself up on her side, head on her hand, to better appreciate the view.

"A really terrible idea," she repeated. "Getting your life together enough to call and come over like a normal human being for one night doesn't change that. But I've been known to go for bad ideas now and then."

Matt made an unintelligible noise into the pillowcase.

Claire flicked a stray bit of hair over her shoulder and smiled at him. "Oh, is that how it is? You can beat up assholes all night long, no problem, but one little orgasm and you're out like a light." She poked his shoulder, gently. "Some devil you are."

Matt turned his head to the right, just enough to uncover his mouth and one unfocused eye. "I don't think there's necessarily any correlation between violence and, uh. And lust."

Claire snorted. "Really? That's your counterargument? I know you're not that naïve."

Matt grinned at her, a soft quirk of his mouth half-hidden by the pillow and the line of his shoulder and upper arm. "I didn't say they can't be connected, only that it's not required. And devils have-- have areas of interest, assigned responsibilities, just like angels."

"Or lawyers."

The smile widened. "Or lawyers," Matt agreed. "Nobody can specialize in everything."

"Hmm. True," Claire said, as she lifted her left hand from the sheets and reached toward Matt again. "But I think you should reconsider your choice of secondary specialties."

"Devils--" Matt started to say, and then interrupted himself with a yawn. "Devils do nothing for free. What's my payment for this hypothetical deal?"

"Negotiable. But we can start with this." Claire set the tip of her index finger on the nape of Matt's neck, felt him shiver at the contact. She wondered if he could feel the whorls that formed her fingerprint, if he could distinguish more fine details with a relatively insensitive patch of skin than she could with one of the most nerve-rich parts of her body, or if he simply felt heat and pressure at a fever pitch. Maybe someday she'd ask.

After a moment, he stilled, his one visible brow drawn down in puzzlement. "Claire?"

"Shh. Just-- let me."

She'd caught a few strands of his hair between her skin and his. As she slid her finger along his neck, toward his shoulder blade, she felt their slight resistance and then the release as they pulled free. Then it was just the smooth resilience of skin and the faint, there-not-there downy softness of body hair. Claire shut her eyes for a moment and tried to drink the world through her own ears and skin: not like Matt did, but maybe a thin, attenuated shadow of the sensations he swam through every day, that didn't have an off button like eyelids for sight.

She felt skin and hair, body heat radiating upward from his back to her hand, which wavered slightly despite her best efforts to hold it still. Sheets under her body, cotton worn thin and soft by years of washing, the folds no problem now but perhaps irritating if she didn't pull them straight before trying to sleep. The soft noise of breathing, hers and Matt's, not quite in rhythm with each other; she slowed hers down to match, and he made a pleased little hum in response. Around them, water rushing through the pipes in the walls, the creak of floorboards somewhere overhead, the white noise of traffic and pedestrians on the street outside, taking advantage of a warm weekend night in early spring. The scent of sex and drying sweat, the disinfectants and old blood that clung to her hands and his, the trace of wine and Chinese dumplings in their mingled breath.

Claire opened her eyes and smiled at the half-lidded pleasure on Matt's face.

Then she moved her hand.

Slowly, delicately, she traced across his shoulder blade, first toward herself, then away to the valley of his spine, a fault line between the solid planes of muscle that sheathed his bones. Matt's strength was more subtle from behind, no iconic muscle groups like pectorals and abdominals to shout how carefully he honed his body into a weapon. But it was there for anyone who took the time to see.

So were his scars. She ghosted her fingers down his right side until she was nearly touching the sheets, circled the edge of the deep wound that had almost killed him, the one he must have torn open and restitched himself judging by the ragged spread of the scar.

"I didn't--" he started to say.

Claire pressed her whole hand flat against his side. "Shh."

Matt drew another breath... then let it out, silently, in acquiescence. In trust. Heat radiated from his body to her hand and back again. The quiet motion of his breathing pushed against her arm. She almost imagined she could feel his blood rush busily underneath his skin, spreading through a thousand capillaries and a million individual cells.

Claire lifted her hand in a slow curve, from the heel of her palm to the last joints of her fingers, until the tips of her index and middle fingers were the only point of contact between their bodies. She slid them over to his spine, pressed down on the knob of a lower thoracic vertebra, then walked her fingers up his back, one vertebra at a time. She paused at his neck, tipped her hand sideways like a blade and ran it slowly back down, pressing as hard as she could without a good angle for leverage.

Matt hummed, just barely over the threshold of audible sound.

Claire repeated that hard line of pressure a few times until his eyes closed in pleasure, and then twice more at half speed. Then she shifted back to a single fingertip and traced idle spirals for a minute, let the loops grow and shrink until she'd circled every scar she could see in the dim light of her bedside lamp.

Matt shifted, pressed his hips down into her mattress. Claire grinned. Not so sleepy after all, was he?

She skimmed her hand downward, past the small of his back, and cupped her palm over the swell of his butt. She felt tiny goose bumps rise beneath her touch, the slight shiver and twitch as Matt forced himself to stillness. Curious, she let her fingers drift toward the cleft of his ass, trailing goose bumps in her wake. They hadn't talked about anything beyond vanilla, but she couldn't help wondering if maybe...

"Ngh," Matt said, and arched up into her touch. "Claire. Claire, please--"

She trailed her fingers back up his spine, achingly slow. "Please what?"

"I don't know, something, anything. Whatever you want, just-- just--"

"Whatever I want, hmm? And no reciprocal demands. That's a remarkable lack of precision in your terms, mister devil. Are you sure you don't want to renegotiate our deal?"

Matt swallowed, opened blank eyes that still somehow managed to look dazed. "Deal?"

"About your new area of specialization in sin," Claire said, wriggling sideways until she could rest her chin on his upper arm, so close they were sharing each other's breath. "Which in this case would be tempting me to take a chance on a terrible idea."

Matt turned his head slightly, his version of a surprised blink. "Uh? Oh! Right." He pulled his right arm out from under both Claire and the pillow and tipped his hand up to cup his fingers along the curve of her jaw, rest his thumb at the corner of her lips. "Fair warning: I've been told I can be dangerously persuasive with the right motivation. And you make me-- you're very motivating. Terrible idea notwithstanding."

Claire turned her head to kiss the tip of his thumb. "I like a little danger in my life. You may have noticed that."

Matt smiled, that slow, expressive curve of unfairly red lips that never failed to draw her eyes. "Oh, I have. And since you just made my opening argument for me, I think we should move on to the presentation of evidence. I have a lot of points to make. We could be here all night."

Laughing, Claire let him draw her in.

**Author's Note:**

> Dear anon who made this prompt: thank you for introducing me to that gifset! It is delicious in all the right ways. Also, if you want me to link this fic to your account as a gift, just tell me and I'll edit the file.


End file.
